xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>! What differences in ideas of
>affordances have you picked up in the recent discourse?
>mike
Now I think on, it was in a parallel universe that some of us inhabit,
"EURFAT". <<Maybe Eva can confirm!>>
The issue revolves around a debate we were having on the "design of
systems" and whether one could conceptualise "affordances" as something
that can be engineered into systems as a property of a system or is it
more correctly used in terms of the perception of the human actor.
Norman states :"I introduced the term affordance to design in my book,
"The Psychology of Everyday Things" (POET: also published as "The Design
of ..."). The concept has caught on, but not always with true
understanding. Part of the blame lies with me: I should have used the term
"perceived affordance," for in design, we care much more about what the
user perceives than what is actually true. What the designer cares about
is whether the user perceives that some action is possible (or in the case
of perceived non-affordances, not possible)."
in http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances-and-design.html
He also says:
The word "affordance" was originally invented by the perceptual
psychologist J. J.
Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between
the world and an
actor (a person or animal). To Gibson, affordances are a
relationship. They are a part of
nature: they do not have to be visible, known, or desirable. Some
affordances are yet to
be discovered. Some are dangerous. I suspect that none of us know
all the affordances
of even everyday objects."
The last sentence seems to confirm Norman's subsequent use of the word ...
ie a property of objects rather than the realtionship between subjects and
objects.
Either way... it is a useful communincative term for a set of ideas those
of us designing systems can latch onto.
Martin
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